Working with a team, and splitting the money fairly

Collectives fall apart over two things, and neither of them is taste. The first is work that everybody assumed somebody else was doing. The second is money that was never discussed because discussing it felt mercenary while the whole thing was still a favour between friends. Both are solved by conversations that take an hour and feel slightly awkward.

Four jobs that always need an owner

Whatever the size of the group, these four exist and each needs one name against it.

• Bookings. Talks to artists and agents, agrees fees, holds the running order. One voice, because two people negotiating with the same agent is how a fee gets agreed twice.
• Money. Owns the budget, pays people, settles with the venue, keeps the records. This is a real job and it is the one most often left unassigned.
• Promotion. Owns the campaign, the assets and the calendar of what goes out when. Also owns the list, which is the asset that survives everything else.
• The night. Owns the run of show, the door, and the decisions made between doors and lock-up. On the night this person outranks everybody, including whoever founded the thing.

One person can hold two of these. Nobody can hold four for long, and the failure shows up as a promoter who is doing the door, the settle and the guest list at the same time while the room needs somebody watching it.

Decide whether this is paid work or a profit split

This is the question that causes most collective arguments, and it is almost never asked directly. There are two coherent answers and mixing them without saying so is what creates resentment.

Paid work. People are paid a stated amount for a stated job, before profit. The designer gets a fee, the door team gets a fee, the person doing the settle gets a fee. Whatever remains belongs to whoever carries the risk. This is clean, it survives a loss, and it works when contributions are uneven.

Profit split. Everyone shares what is left after costs, in agreed proportions. This works when contributions are genuinely comparable and everybody accepts that a bad month pays nobody. It stops working the moment one person is doing three times the work for the same share.

Write down which one you are running. A hybrid is fine, and it must be explicit: fees for defined roles, then a split of what remains.

Agree the split before there is money

Splitting profit is easy to discuss when the number is hypothetical and hard when it is sitting on a table at 3am. Have the conversation early and record it, including the parts nobody wants to raise.

• The proportions, in plain numbers.
• What comes off the top before anything is split.
• What happens at a loss, and who covers it.
• Whether anyone put money in up front, and whether that is repaid first.
• What happens to equipment the group buys.
• What happens if somebody leaves, including who keeps the name and the audience list.

That last point matters more than it seems. The name, the social accounts and the list of attendees are the valuable things a collective builds, and deciding their ownership after a falling-out is how nights end permanently.

Run the money visibly

One budget, shared with everyone, updated after every event. Anyone should be able to see what came in, what went out and what is left without asking. Most collective suspicion is not about dishonesty, it is about opacity, and a shared document removes it entirely. The budget guide has the one-page layout.

If you are paying out through a ticketing platform, decide who receives the money and make that a deliberate choice rather than an accident of whose account was set up first. On Dizko you can nominate a payout recipient, which is how a collective pays a single treasurer or pays the venue directly. The payout documentation covers how to set that up.

Meet once between events

An hour, a week or two after each event, with the numbers in front of you. Three questions carry it: what worked, what did not, and what are we doing next. Keep it short and keep it regular, because the alternative is a long emotional conversation once a year when something has already broken.

Know when to bring somebody in

Scaling a collective is usually a mistake made too early. Adding people adds coordination cost immediately and capacity only later. Bring somebody in when a specific job has an owner who is drowning, give them that job with a clear boundary, and pay them for it rather than offering a share of something that does not exist yet.